Train services on the state-run East Coast Main Line are not as reliable as
hoped, rail minister Simon Burns has said, as the Government begins the
process of re-privatising the line.

Passenger growth on the London-to-Scotland franchise has also been lower over the past 10 years than on other routes operated by private train companies, Mr Burns argues in an article for The Daily Telegraph.

The Government intends to re-privatise the East Coast line by February 2015. Labour and rail unions have been pushing to keep the franchise in public hands and use it as a benchmark against which private operators can be compared.

The London to Scotland services have been operated by the state-owned East Coast Main Line Company since 2009 after National Express handed back the prestigious franchise.

Mr Burns acknowledges that East Coast has done a “reasonable job of running the service in difficult circumstances”, but he adds that "recent reliability has not been as high as we had expected".

According to the latest performance figures, East Coast had the poorest punctuality record of all of the 19 rail franchises in the four weeks to March 31, although it was only slightly ahead of Virgin Trains, which operates West Coast Main Line services.

Only 82.8pc of East Coast services arrived on time during the period, compared with 97.2pc on the best performing franchise, c2c, operated by National Express. Over the 366 days to March 31, East Coast had an average punctuality record of 83.9pc.

Mr Burns also argues that growth on the East Coast line has been slower than on the West Coast franchise.

“The East Coast has attracted a third more customers over the past 10 years, for example, while demand on the West Coast has doubled,” he writes. “These contrasting figures show how private-sector operators can outperform those from the public sector .”

The Government will today publish plans of how it expects to run rail franchise competitions following last year’s West Coast debacle, which has cost the taxpayer at least £50m.